Cartwright Reading

I have to rant about this a little bit, mostly because I am going into the (and currently am in) the healthcare field. The reading, for those who did it, details illnesses that are unique to negros, which includes the want/need to run away. I think this is ridiculous, and it just goes to show how FAR people were willing to go to justify that what they were doing was good and right. Cognitive dissonance is the psychology term used to describe anything that we find unpleasant. Say you don’t like broccoli. But you have to eat it every day. Eventually, because you are so upset about having to eat broccoli your brain will tell you hey, actually, you love broccoli! I think the same applies to slavery. There is NO WAY that people really, truly believed they were being humane. I think that they knew it was wrong, but were selfish, and the dissonance led them to believe anything that might possibly make what they were doing ok in their minds. Not that that’s any excuse, but to think that wanting to run away from slavery was an illness is absurd!